US company Bioquark, which was established to develop new technologies to help repair and reanimate the organ after death, is claiming dying may not be the absolute end.

The team from Bioquark have been studying certain amphibians, such as a salamander, and a number of fish which have the ability to regenerate limbs and even their brain after they have gone through a traumatic experience.

Ira Pastor, head of the company, wrote for Singularity Weblog: “We are repeatedly told through the medical establishment that brain death is ‘irreversible’ and should be considered the end of the line.

“Or is it? Have we come to a technological point where we are able to ‘push the envelope’ to see if this is truly the case?

“While it is true that human beings lack substantial regenerative capabilities in the central nervous system (CNS), many non-human species, such as amphibians, planarians, and certain fish, can repair, regenerate and remodel substantial portions of their brain and brain stem even after critical life-threatening trauma.”

According to the company’s website, Mr Pastor is also on the advisory board of ReAnima – a project that is “exploring the potential of cutting edge biomedical technology for human neuro-regeneration and neuro-reanimation”.

Mr Pastor told MailOnline: “The mission of the ReAnima Project is to focus on clinical research in the state of brain death, or irreversible coma, in subjects who have recently met the Uniform Determination of Death Act criteria, but who are still on cardio-pulmonary or trophic support – a classification in many countries around the world known as a ‘living cadaver’.

“To undertake such a complex initiative, we are combining certain biologic regenerative tools, with other existing medical devices typically used for stimulation of patients with other severe disorders of consciousness.

“We just received Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval for our first 20 subjects and we hope to start recruiting patients immediately.”

He added they hope to see results as soon as 2017.

Mr Pastor continued: “We believe we are quite close to a point in time where the delineation between coma, and irreversible coma or brain death will become ‘blurred’ and hope to have such promising insights by 2017.

“Because 50,000 of the 150,000 people who die daily do not die from ageing, but from various acute traumas that lead rapidly to brain death, we think even this modest dynamic will have a major impact.”